News

Eastern Bloc Montreal

01.08.2018 , Exhibitions, News

Eastern Bloc

7240 Clark, Montreal

October 3-26, 2018

GALLERY HOURS

  • Wed to Fri | 16.00 – 19.00
  • Sat – Sun | 13.00 – 17.00

Curators: Martín Rodríguez (Co-Director) & Éliane Ellbogen (Former Artistic Director and Founder of Eastern Bloc)

“Amplification”, in its figurative and literal sense, is the act of making something more marked or enhanced, on the one hand, and the process of increasing the amplitude of an electrical signal, on the other. Amplification of both artists’ careers and art practices is what Eastern Bloc strives towards in its programming. It is what prompted the centre to curate a retrospective exhibit featuring the work of artists with whom we have closely collaborated over the past ten years, who are not so emerging anymore, but who inspire us to continue amplifying the work of younger, more emerging artists.

The artists exhibited in “Amplification” form an important part of the digital arts landscape in Canada. Many of them exhibited in group or solo shows for the first time at Eastern Bloc, while others were presented by the centre at a formative stage in their career. They have all, over the past decade, developed a strong bond with the centre and have contributed to strengthening and “amplifying” the community of Canadian and international digital artists.

The exhibiting artists were invited to create a work inspired by the work of ten pioneering Canadian New Media artists.

Erin Gee created work inspired by Cheryl L’hirondelle; Darsha Hewitt by Doug Back; Sofian Audry by Monty Cantsin?; Craig Fahner and Matthew Waddell by Catherine Richards; Adam Basanta by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; Jennifer Chan by Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby; Sabrina Ratté and Roger Tellier-Craig by Jean-Pierre Boyer; and Erin Sexton by Michael Snow. Eleven emerging and mid-career artists have, as such, created a body of work that represents a “living archive” of Eastern Bloc. The work exhibited in Amplification delves into and revises the history of New Media art in Canada, as seen through the perspective of a new generation of Canadian artists. Amplification is Eastern Bloc’s contribution to the past, present, and future of digital arts in Montreal and in Canada.

Machine Unlearning @ META MARATHON Düsseldorf

04.05.2018 , News, Performances

I will be performing (and live streaming) a new audio performance work that features myself in a live ASMR re-performance of deep learning text.  The work will be accessed through a streaming YouTube link via the distributed screens of audience member’s smartphones and laptops for a half hour via headphones in a quiet environment where blankets and sleeping are invited as part of the work.  This performance will take place as part of META MARATHON at NRW Forum, Düsseldorf, Germany on May 26, 2018.

NEW TECHNOLOGY FESTIVAL META MARATHON AT THE NRW-FORUM DÜSSELDORF

42 hours of non-stop talks, performances, film screenings, concerts, exhibitions, and workshops on the subject of Artificial Intelligence: the META Marathon is a new technology festival taking place from 25th to 27th May 2018 at the NRW Forum Düsseldorf. The participants design the festival themselves, switch roles between expert and amateur as well as experiment with the new format—including on-site accommodation. The Festival Director is the futurist and entrepreneur Christopher Peterka.

An innovative technology festival and a digital happening: META is an invitation to participants to collaborate in an open process and collectively develop new ideas on digital modernity and Artificial Intelligence. In doing so, META breaks away from the series of digital conferences and exhibitions that talk about phenomena more than being part of them.

META follows from the assumption that the changes made by digital technologies are so radical that they require new kinds of research and understanding. The participants are invited to work together in a 42-hour marathon packed with stimulating events—in workshops, labs, and talks with sometimes radical exploratory methods—and have the opportunity to spend the night at the NRW Forum.

Those wishing to participate must apply in advance at https://www.metamarathon.net/. The cost of taking part is 42€, which includes food and a sleeping place, and there is space for a total of 400 curious pioneers. Some of those who have already registered are creatives and thinkers from the realms of research, teaching, economics, art and culture, including artist and composer Erin Gee, professor and curator Joasia Krysa, artist and professor Hans Bernhard (Uebermorgen. com), Professor Chris Geiger, nyris founder Anna Lukasson-Herzig, and many more.

What will language look like in the future and how will we use it? How is digital media changing communication? What are the most important skills when machines and Artificial Intelligence are capable of performing human work? How do we perceive and communicate with each other in a world determined by the flow of information and data? Based on the historical agenda of the Macy Conferences, META addresses the issues of memory and storage, language, communication, and learning and perception. The Macy Conferences were ten interdisciplinary conferences that took place between 1946 and 1953 in the United States. It was a hitherto unprecedented open experimental arrangement in which scientists of various disciplines such as neurophysiology, mathematics, psychology, and sociology worked out the basics of cybernetics and cognitive science.

With its novel format, META would like to go beyond the concept of a conference and be a discursive space in which digital modernity and its radical social changes can be explored and described in a festival setting. Contributors should bring their own questions and theories and be prepared to let themes develop on the spot as well as engage in open dialogue between people, disciplines, and machines. The outcome is open and applications will be accepted immediately.

To find more detailed information about the program and to apply visit: https://www.metamarathon.net/

META Marathon
25-27.5.2018

Starts: 25.5, 21:59
Ends: 27.5, 9.30

NRW-Forum Düsseldorf | Ehrenhof 2 | 40479 Düsseldorf

Press Contakt | Irit Bahle | Phone: +49 (0)211-89266-81 | [email protected]

For more information, or to register for the event, visit the META MARATHON website

esse magazine spring 2018

01.05.2018 , Articles, News

My work Swarming Emotional Pianos is featured in an essay written by Lindsay Leblanc in esse magazine 93 – Printemps / été 2018. The essay also features two media artists that I respect very much, David Rokeby and Jean-Pierre Gauthier.

Following is an abstract:

Sketchy Machines: Propositions Around Three Robotic Artworks

With the increasing presence of machines in public and private life, we continue to find new ways of articulating our relationships with them. In this article, the author uses the sketch as a frame of analysis for machine artworks by Canadian artists David Rokeby, Jean-Pierre Gauthier, and Erin Gee, and argues that the sketch is a fundamentally interdisciplinary and material state that accounts for machines’ complex engagements with human and other-than-human agents. Highlighting the sketch’s unfinished, imperfect, and adaptable qualities, the author attempts to define a “sketchy materiality” as it occurs in robotic art.
Lindsay LeBlanc

To learn more, or to purchase this magazine as a digital PDF  –
https://esse.ca/en/sketch

NRW Forum Dusseldorf

21.03.2018 , Exhibitions, News

My collaborative work with Sofian Audry, of the soone (2018) will be featured in an exciting exhibition at NRW Forum focused on contemporary art and AI, curated by Tina Sauerländer (peer to space).

Artists: Nora Al-Badri & Jan Nikolai Nelles (DE), Jonas Blume (DE) Justine Emard (FR), Carla Gannis (US), Sofian Audrey and Erin Gee (CAN), Liat Grayver (ISR/DE), Faith Holland (US), Tuomas A. Laitinen (FI), and William Latham (UK)

Initiated and hosted by Leoni Spiekermann (ARTGATE Consulting)
Curated by Tina Sauerlaender and Peggy Schoenegge
At NRW Forum Düsseldorf,  Ehrenhof 2, 40479 Düsseldorf, Germany

Preview: May 25 – 27, 2018, during Meta Marathon (Tickets/Apply)
Opening: June 8, 2018, 7pm

Exhibition: June 9 – August 19, 2018

We are particularly excited for this exhibition because we will debut a 3D printed enclosure for the work made especially by Gregory Perrin, who has previously worked with me on the sensor box for Project H.E.A.R.T. (2017) as well as an amazing box for installation of Swarming Emotional Pianos (2015).

NRW Forum website 

peer to space website

Algorithms that Matter @ IEM Graz

02.03.2018 , News, Research

I’ve been selected to be a featured artist in residence at the Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik (IEM) in Graz, Austria, participating in the Algorithms that Matter Residency from April-June 2018.

From the ALMAT website:

“Algorithms that Matter is an artistic research project by Hanns Holger Rutz and David Pirrò.  It aims at understanding the increasing influence of algorithms, translating them into aesthetic positions in sound, building a new perspective on algorithm agency by subjecting the realm of algorithms to experimentation.

Almat is grounded in the idea that algorithms are agents that co-determine the boundary between an artistic machine or “apparatus” and the object produced through this machine. The central question is: How do algorithmic processes emerge and structure the praxis of experimental computer music? The hypothesis is that these processes, instead of being separated from the composer—as generators and transformers of infinite shapes—exhibit a specific force that retroacts and changes the very praxis of composition and performance.”

 

I will use this opportunity to extend my reach into exciting new forms of embodied algorithmicity, developing new techniques for combining physiological markers of emotion with algorithmic agencies.

To learn more about the research and proceedings of this residency, check out scans of my sketchbook, and transcriptions of conversations between myself and the other residents/researchers at IEM, click here to access our open exposition on the Research Catalogue online platform.

 

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Digifest Toronto

02.03.2018 , Exhibitions, News

Thu, 04/26/2018 –
Sat, 04/28/2018

CORUS QUAY

25 Dockside Dr
ON M5A 1B6 Toronto


Presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto
Curated by Tina Sauerländer (Berlin) and Erandy Vergara (Montreal)

Project H.E.A.R.T. by Erin Gee and Alex M. Lee
Enter Me Tonight by Li Alin
 
At the invitation of the Goethe-Institut curators Tina Sauerländer and Erandy Vergara have selected VR works for this year’s Toronto Digifest, including two recent pieces by Berlin-based Canadian artist Li Alin and Montreal-based artist Erin Gee in collaboration with South Korean-born, US-based artist Alex M. Lee. The artists use humor and irony to engage in controversial topics: emotions in first-person shooter video games and war in the case of Gee, and a futuristic exploration on human reproduction in technology-oriented times in the case of Alin.

The audience itself explores Gee’s H.E.A.R.T., a virtual work where you have to control your emotions to control the leading character in a war-related VR game, as well as Alin’s Enter Me Tonight, a VR environment engaged with issues on human reproduction, economy, biology, pornography and technology.

In a contextualizing event, the curators will speak about the history of VR and current trends and critical perspectives on this technology.

Digifest 2018 website

Event information courtesy of Goethe Institute

Mutek_img Montreal

02.03.2018 , Artist Talks, News

MUTEK_IMG

Forum on current practices in digital creation

Automation Rules Everything Around Me
Panel – Friday April 13, 2018 1:30pm

Chatter about AI and machine learning is ubiquitous, but are we mindful of how much automation shapes our experience of the world? Services like Uber offer convenience, but their ‘disruption’ throws labour and legislation paradigms into turmoil. Against this backdrop of techno-solutionism and anxiety, algorithms have become a key subject of artistic investigation — and creators have been exploring automation through robotics for decades. Starting with ‘the artist’s toolkit’ and working outwards to bigger culture machinations, this session will identify both possibilities and peril.

Speakers

Tim Maughan (CA)
Erin Gee (CA)

Date
April 13, 2018 13:30 – 15:00
Venue

Phi Centre – Space A
407 St-Pierre Street
Montréal, Canada

Free / RSVP required

New World Notes

26.02.2018 , Articles, Interviews, News

Project H.E.A.R.T. (2018) was written about by Wagner James Au in his New World Notes blog on virtual worlds. I’m particularly tickled about this because he is the official blogger for the virtual world Second Life, so I’m very honored that he finds the world of Project H.E.A.R.T. interesting!

Wagner James Au, consultant and author of “The Making of Second Life” (HarperCollins) and “Game Design Secrets” (Willey) reports on virtual worlds, VR and related topics — including augmented reality, virtual currency, games and game development, and their appearances in RL popular culture and politics.

Click here to see the article

Rhode Island College

25.02.2018 , Exhibitions, News

“// lonely avatar”, is an exhibition which investigates the use, meaning, and expressive potential of avatars in the contemporary digital landscape. “Lucid Dreaming” ruminates on the emptiness of the virtual avatar whilst “Project H.E.A.R.T.” involves filling that empty avatar with your emotion through a specially designed biosensor. Both projects follow a trajectory of thought in regards to the metaphorical potential of avatars in the virtual space. Curated by Frank Yefeng Wang, this show features works by Alex M Lee commissioned by Trinity Square Video in Toronto, ON and a project made in collaboration with Canadian artist Erin Gee.

Opening reception: 5-8pm
Artist Lecture: 7-7:30pm

The Chazan Family Gallery
Alex & Ani Hall
Rhode Island College
600 Mt. Pleasant Ave
Providence, RI 02908